


온통  다른 말을 하는 다른 고래들 뿐인데

by bathtubsmash (bluedreaming)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Animal Death, Blood, Emotional Baggage, Family Issues, Isolation, M/M, Multi, Nausea, loss of appetite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-04 09:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5329937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/pseuds/bathtubsmash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jisoo isn't looking for anyone to 'complete' him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	온통  다른 말을 하는 다른 고래들 뿐인데

**Author's Note:**

  * For [junqhan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/junqhan/gifts).



> I woke up from a dream and wrote this.  
> Listen to the [Cloud Atlas](https://play.spotify.com/album/0qDbVQifSUz2oVN0ns4XSc) soundtrack while you read this.

 

He dreams about whales in the arctic, a whale beaching itself on shore, cool greys and thick shadows and dark secrets of its skin, slipping over the fine pebbles of the beach. There are gulls circling as he crests the hill of the beach, wind stirring the grass as his feet carry him over the ridge and he looks down on the ocean and the whale who's come here to die.

Jisoo wakes with tears in his eyes. The wind is howling outside his window, sirens mixing with the trees rustling, the skeleton leaves of autumn brushing together as the roar of an airplane sounds overhead. His stomach twists, knots, reminds him of what he ate last night, didn't eat last night, slipping out from between warm sheets to run barefoot across the cold floor to the washroom, door swinging open with a thud, and once again Jisoo is glad he has a single.

There's no one peering through sleepy eyes as he stumbled back into bed, no one to mumble out a question muffled in sheets and the shadows that spill out of sleepy mouths. Jisoo buries his face in his pillow, slips back into the grey.

 

Class is class. University is university. The girl in the row in front of him accidentally drops her handout; Jisoo watches as it slips through her fingers, even as she makes a wild grab for it, her coffee splashing in a dark stain arching up over her white blouse as her reach falls short. He leans down under the arm desk, snags the paper and passes it back with a small smile but she only nods, distracted as she tries to mop up her shirt with a tissue.

There's a ringing echo in the room when Jisoo looks up; the professor stands at the white board, marker posed, waiting. He must have asked a question but Jisoo missed it, his eyes following the trajectory of the paper like the leaves falling outside the window this morning.

He can't get the beached whale out of his head, the grey skies like a ceiling.

"Maybe we dream in colour so that the colours pop louder?" a girl in the front row asks. She has long hair; Jisoo watches as she flicks a strand back with nimble fingers.

 _But what if you're used to dreaming in monochrome?_ Jisoo doesn't ask, because no one seems to understand. _What if you're not missing any pieces?_

"Have you had a _glimmer_ yet?" the professor asks, and the student shakes her head, long hair swirling around her shoulders. It's distracting. Jisoo chews the end of his pencil and watches the professor's face. "A _glimmer_ is very distinct," he says, and begins writing on the whiteboard, swoops of marker lines that Jisoo traces onto the paper of his open notebook, his letters neatly between the lines.

There's something nice about pencil on paper, the simple contrast of black on white, the scratching of pencils as students bow their heads over their desks and write the words out. Jisoo finds himself smiling.

 

The whale is still on the beach; he can hear it, not with his ears but as a fine buzzing beneath his skin as his bare feet swish through the grass, sharp blades scraping at soft skin. He wonders if the whale is sad, dying alone on the beach, singing to the gulls who don't understand what it's saying. Walking down the slope, small stones brushes loose by his feet as he steps, strangely sure-footed on the gravel, Jisoo can't make out the whale's voice, but he understands its words anyway.

 _You're all alone like me,_ Jisoo thinks, clutching at the tattered edges of his loneliness and pulling them around him like a blanket. The cold wind winds fingers through the gaps; it doesn't matter. He watches the seagulls swoop and soar, calling, every closer to the dying whale. _I'm sorry,_ Jisoo can see the shape of the words in his thoughts, but he can't make the write sounds to speak.

The ocean is a mass of greys and darks and velvety black spotted by pale foam, as the first seagull dives.

And suddenly there's red.

Jisoo wakes up, mouth open in silence, fingers clutching at his sheets.

 _It can't be,_ the words repeat over and over in his head, _it can't be_. It's only now that the first trail of wet falls down his cheek, as he turns over in the darkness before dawn, and doesn't fall asleep.

 

He doesn't want it, and Jisoo doesn't wake up in the morning—because he never fell back asleep at all—looking for a _glimmer_. He doesn't need a soulmate, someone to complete him, because he's not missing anything.

There's a message from his mother when he checks his phone, heading for breakfast, the strap of his bag slung over his shoulder. It's light, insubstantial with just an iPad and charger, no heavy textbooks or notebooks to keep him grounded.

Joshua the first line begins. He swipes it away into the trash and heads for his first class, empty stomach filled with the whirling words that he didn't have to read to know they were there.

When are you coming home?

Jisoo slips into the empty classroom, sinking into a seat as he sound of the leg scraping the linoleum floor echoes. He winces, but there's no one to hear. He pulls out his iPad and scrolls over the readings, even though he has them committed to memory.

His eyes are running over the words, black on white, such simple shades as he drinks up the meaning in the quiet. The peace is broken suddenly, fracturing at the seams as a person laughs. Jisoo looks up, peering at the doorway; there are two people standing there, students by their age and book bags. Jisoo frowns, his concentration broken. The one with the long hair laughs again, at first he thinks it's a girl but the figure turns their head and he sees the curve of the neck, skin smooth over the rise of an adam's apple— _oh_ , Jisoo thinks, absently, it's not important, but that's when he sees it—

Red, just a flicker, the way the student's hair moves he turns his head to laugh, shining in the morning sunlight—

 _glimmer_.

Jisoo feels sick, unbalanced, _this can't be real_. Glancing down, the screen of his iPad has gone black, the automatic shut-off feature, and he can see his face reflected in the surface, wide-eyed, pale. He closes the cover in a sudden gesture, rather like slamming a door, as he stumbles to his feet and shoves the iPad in his bag, strap twisting in his grasp.

"Excuse me," he mutters, brushing past the two people on his way out the door, avoiding the long-haired student's gaze though his hand barely grazes the soft skin of his arm and it feels—

right.

Jisoo's stomach lurches, tripping over his feet and out the door; his eyes catch the other student's gaze for a moment before he turns away, expression unfathomable.

 

When Jisoo comes out of the bathroom, face still damp from splashing his face, a hollow feeling opening in the pit of his stomach, he considers going back to his room. He really, really wants to go back to his room. But he doesn't, because he's a good student and it doesn't matter if there's something like a _glimmer_ because he doesn't think the guy even noticed it. Probably. Jisoo sighs, and runs his fingers through his hair. He can just ignore it. There are no laws about soulmates; you don't have to answer the _glimmer_.

Of course, maybe the reason is that no one actually wants to, but Jisoo ignores that thought too, slipping back into the classroom just in front of the teacher, glad he was so early this morning. He can't help letting his eyes skim over the crowd of heads bend over their screens and notebooks as he looks for a seat, and it's as he's climbing the steps to a lone seat in the second last row, against the window, that he gets the flash of red again. His stomach flips, but he's not surprised this time, even though he remembers his dream.

The seagulls.

Settling into his seat, Jisoo opens his iPad, stylus slipping across the screen as he takes notes, listening to the teacher, but his attentions keeps sliding over to the student with the long hair, _glimmer_ and it's gone again. He seems to be close with the other guy, short hair, long chin, kind of. They're practically wrapped around each other, and Jisoo can't help looking—

the short-haired student looks up, over his shoulder, and meets Jisoo's gaze with an unfathomable expression on his face.

Jisoo looks away, and keeps his head bent for the rest of the class.

 

Jisoo doesn't want to go to sleep. He doesn't want to dream the same dream, the whale alone, waiting to die, the calm coolness of the greys and shades so violently disrupted by the intrusion of colour, of something that's not supposed to be there, something that's reminding him that his small safe world isn't really safe, isn't really small and self-contained.

There's another message from his mother. Jisoo turns his phone over.

He sits in bed cocooned in crumpled sheets, the lamp on and the sodium streetlights visible like gold haloes through the window, blinds yanked up and away from the glass. Jisoo reviews his notes, does his readings, washes his head out with black and white, black and white, white and black until his eyes blur and he drifts to sleep without being able to help it.

He's back on the ridge, heels on grass, toes digging into sand that crumbles beneath his feet into gravel as he slides down the embankment on gravel, time carrying him inexorably along as the seagulls swoop and dip and red, red, RED—as his greys are polluted, corrupted and he wants to run, wants to turn away from the pain and loneliness and fear that he doesn't want to see but he's still on the gravel slope, rushing down to the beach and he can't get a foothold, can't turn and struggle back up the embankment.

And then he's in the ocean and it's blue.

 

Jisoo sits in class and stares at the teacher, watching the way his hand drifts over the whiteboard, black lines forming words, the lines staccato in their tiny strokes of letters. The stylus in his fingers hangs limp; he licks his dry lips.

They're not here, today; it's a good thing. It's a good thing but Jisoo can't stop thinking about red.

And blue.

He's confused. A _glimmer_ is supposed to. . .he doesn't understand. His hand moves across the screen and the words from the teacher inscribe themselves on the white and Jisoo tries to understand why he feels so empty when he knows he's not missing anything.

 _I never asked for this,_ he thinks, and shuts his eyes. The dying whale, seagulls swooping, stares him in the face.

"What if you see more than one colour?" he asks the professor, as he's walking by, swept with the rush of students out the door. The professor's brow is furrowed, tucking his laptop back into his bag along with a pack of whiteboard markers; the transparent plastic sleeve isn't properly closed and two of the markers slide out and onto the floor, rolling to land against Jisoo's feet.

Red and blue.

"A _glimmer_ , you mean?" the professor asks, distracted, searching for the lost markers as Jisoo crouches down to grasp them between his fingers. He hands them over the desk, as he professor looks at the watch on his wrist. "I'm sorry," he says, shoving the markers in his bag, loose to rattle around the interior. "I'm running late." Jisoo doesn't say anything as the professor disappears into the throng of students.

Everything fades to grey, just for a moment, as he stands apart, watching, before he blinks and the colour comes back.

 

Jisoo is heading for—he doesn't know where exactly, head bowed as he keeps walking. The phone in his pocket is vibrating and maybe if he walks fast enough—

 _you can't outrun something that's in your pocket,_ he tells himself, digging his hand into his pocket to pull out his phone, even though he can't quite make himself accept the call. Finally he raises it to his ear.

"Hi mom," he says, biting his lip while he walks blindly ahead.

"Joshua," she says, and he winces, the phone trembling in his fingers that feel like ice. "When are you coming home?"

"I'm at school," he reminds her, rounding the corner of the hallway.

"You don't need school," she says, her voice deceptively soft, even though he can hear the strain, the smothered desperation. _You smother me._

"I'm not coming home," Jisoo says quietly, as he hears the hitch in her breathing and he knows she's opening her mouth to guilt him into—

the phone is suddenly gone, slipping through his fingers as he crashes into something that's not a wall as it exhales, "Oof,"

Jisoo's lost the air in his lung too, from the impact, as his eyes flutter and he tries to catch his breath, finally looking up—

"Oh," he says, and then he doesn't say anything at all, as the short-haired student from yesterday meets his gaze, almost level, and Jisoo watches as his grey eyes _glimmer_ blue.

There's a pause, the sound blanking out in a ballooning circle around them for a moment, spreading like ripples in the water that's broken, suddenly, by an unexpected stone being dropped through the surface, as the long-haired student laughs.

"You're right, Seungcheol!" he says, "I see it!" He tugs on the short-haired—Seungcheol—'s sleeve and grins.

"What colour did you see, Jeonghan?" Seungcheol asks, and Jisoo can hear the affection in his voice.

"Yellow," Jeonghan says, as his hair _glimmers_ red and Jisoo blinks. _Yellow?_ Seungcheol nods.

"Wait—?" Jisoo is confused. Seungcheol looks a little more reserved, teeth digging into his bottom lip, but Jeonghan reaches a hand out to Jisoo, who takes it after staring at it for a painful moment, because he doesn't want—

but as soon as their skin touches, something snaps into place, it feels right but also like there's something, stretching out, looking for—

Seungcheol wraps his fingers loosely around their hands and it all comes together.

It's not like Jisoo's mother at all. It _fits_.

"I like you," Jeonghan says, his fingers still pressed to Jisoo's skin. "But you should smile more." He reaches out with his other hand, fingertips barely ghosting across Jisoo's cheek; not too much, only barely enough—

Jisoo's eyes feel wet. He can't remember the last time anyone touched him, he had contact with anybody beyond accidental impersonal brushes of skin against skin in the hallway, the elevator, the stairs.

His eyes are wet, suddenly; Seungcheol's fingers squeeze gently, still wrapped around his hand.

"Smile," Jeonghan says, and Jisoo finds that he can. It's a start.

 

The dream is the same, the grass beneath his bare feet, the sound of the ocean in the distance. Jisoo steps forward, his path already laid out before him, regardless of what he wants, he knows he'll crest the ridge and see the whale and the gulls tearing—

Jisoo blinks in surprise at the high tide covering the beach as the seagulls swoop over the waves, white foam splashing and the blue of the deep, the back of the whale sinking beneath the surface, still spotted with red, but the blue washes the red away. Jisoo watches, standing on the ridge, toes hanging over the beach, his shadow a pool of dark on the water but he can feel the warm on his back as he finally looks over his shoulder and sees the sun.

It's just bright to him, but Jisoo imagines, for a moment, that it's yellow.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from [웨일리언 52](https://play.spotify.com/track/2UaHFGasIW38O4vYvnFvhH) by 방탄소년단.  
> Thank you, Adele. And thank you Tia.


End file.
